What Makes Salvation so Great?

Turn back in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 2 please. Hebrews chapter 2. And we'll read again the first four verses. Hebrews chapter 2 verses 1 to 4. And again, I'm in the legacy standard Bible. Verse 1, "For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away. For if the words spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every trespass and disobedience received a just penalty, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" That salvation first spoken by the Lord was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also testifying with them both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will.

Now first let me say I'm not preaching behind or around Pastor Chris, who's been in Hebrews for quite some time. No, one of the many wonderful things about Holy Scripture is how multifaceted it is, how many different equally valid angles from which verses can be approached, myriad applications and so forth. Now mark this though, I'm not saying there are multiple meanings. Nope, Scripture always and only means what the original author intended it to mean to the original audience. So this message isn't meant to go around our pastor, rather it's a result of our pastor's thoughtful preaching through Hebrews.

As this verse, especially part of this verse, and also another verse we'll look at shortly, a verse that's a little further into the book, have been percolating in my heart and mind since Pastor Chris examined them. So I affirm everything he has so far exposited for us, and I want to focus for a few minutes on a narrow angle coming out of the verse before us and a verse or two from Hebrews chapter 9, okay? Back to our passage, let's read it one more time. "For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away.

For if the words spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every trespass and disobedience received a just penalty, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? That salvation first spoken by the Lord was confirmed to us by those who heard. God also testifying with them both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to his own will." Now, I want us to focus on part of verse 3, but first let's remind ourselves what came before this passage. Verse 1 starts with "For this reason." Well, what reason is that? For what reason?

Well, simply put, the reason that was detailed in chapter 1, which was that the Father spoke through prophets in the olden days, and those prophets were indeed credible spokesmen with delegated authority, authority not their own. But now he has spoken through his own Son who has direct authority as God the Son. So chapter 1 establishes Christ's superiority over the Old Testament prophets and over angels. Then chapter 2 begins with "For this reason we must pay closer attention to what we have heard." Makes sense.

Verse 2 then also hearkens back to chapter 1, which again established Christ's superiority to angels, and basically says, "Look, the word of angels who were lower than Christ was solid and immutable, laying the groundwork for verses 3 and 4, which can be summarized as, 'If the word of angels was sure, how much more sure is the word of Christ?'" Do you see that? Now, all of this is necessary introduction to the first part of verse 3, where I want to land the plain first. The first part of verse 3 says, "How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" Ready for the title of the message? What's so great about salvation?

Or what makes salvation so great? What's so great about salvation? Or what makes salvation so great? And this should probably be part 1 because there could be 11 billion other parts. The Greek word from which we get the English word "great" is, I don't know, I'm going to butcher this, "telikutas," "telikut," whatever. It's a Greek word, and I don't speak Greek. And it can mean a few different things. It can mean vast or very large or mighty. It can mean great as it pertains to age. And it can just mean great. Awesome, wonderful, fantastic.

And again, there's no way that we could exhaust the ways in which our salvation is great, wonderful, awesome, fantastic. We don't have enough time if we had a thousand years and we don't have enough words. Listen to what one longtime pastor had to say about this phrase. Quote, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" What's the answer to that question? The answer is there is no way we will escape if we neglect such a great salvation. Now, this is a sobering word for the world and for the church because most people do neglect the greatness of salvation.

How many people do you know who give serious, sustained attention to the salvation accomplished by Christ? Who love it and think about it and meditate on it and marvel at it and feel continual gratitude for it and commend it to others as valuable and weave it into all the lesser things of their lives and set their hopes on it. Do you live this way? Is it not astonishing how neglectful even professing Christians are of their great salvation? Is there a sense of greatness in your mind about your salvation? When something truly great is happening, there is an appropriate response to greatness.

Do you respond to the greatness of your salvation or do you neglect it? Listen to this. The quote continues, "Do you treat your salvation the way you treat your will or the title to your car or the deed to your house in that you signed it once and it's in a file drawer somewhere, but it's not really a great thing. It has no daily effect on you. Basically, you neglect it." So this is an astonishing word to the church and the world to neglect our great salvation is to come into judgment and there will be no escape. Being a Christian is very serious business. Not sour business, but serious. Very serious. That's good stuff.

So that pastor looked at the greatness of salvation in terms of its magnitude or its shocking eternal impact and I affirm what he said. And we could look at the greatness of salvation in terms of what it cost, right? The Apostle Paul was so intent on focusing on nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Why? Because there is the greatness of salvation. There is the incalculable love of God. There is His inexplicable mercy and grace, but also His shocking wrath and justice.

The precious spotless Lamb of God, the holy Son of God who gave Himself for His sheep, who suffered not only unimaginable physical torture, but a level of spiritual suffering that we cannot begin to comprehend or even apprehend. Now truthfully, my inclination is to camp out right there to focus on the greatness of salvation in terms of the glory of God. Because ultimately, isn't that what it's all about? The glory of God? Indeed it is. The whole point of everything, in fact, is the glory of God. And while my inclination is to part there and expand on that idea, I want to do something a little different this morning.

Something that in one sense I'm a little reluctant to do. And that is, I want to talk about a great personal benefit of salvation. A personal benefit that I believe makes salvation great. My reluctance to do that is due to the fact that modern churches talk of nothing but personal benefits and speak little of the glory of God or the magnitude of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. Too often the modern message makes Christ sound like a therapist or worse, somebody's boyfriend.

Or the gospel is reduced to some message like, "Jesus is better than beer." Worse yet, as we've seen recently with the Chip and Joanna Gaines thing compromise, the gospel is sacrificed on the altar of popularity and financial success. So I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to sound like Joel Osteen, God forbid. I want to be glory of God focused as our AIT wheel says. But as Pastor Chris is fond of saying, there are ditches on both sides of the road. And if you're not careful, you can turn so sharply away from one ditch, you run off into the ditch on the other side of the road.

So I desperately want to avoid the ditch of being man-centered. I want to be sure you do not think I'm saying that what makes salvation great is what it can do for me. Or that what's in it for me is a valid question to ask when you come to Scripture, because it's not. However, having said that, the truth is that there are personal benefits to salvation. And I want to talk about one of them this morning, the one personal benefit that means the most to me. Turn over to Hebrews chapter 9, please. Hebrews chapter 9, and we're going to read from verse 11 through verse 14. Hebrews 9 verses 11 to 14.

Verse 11 says, "But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation, and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood. He entered the holy places once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctified for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, (listen, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God) the personal benefit of salvation that means the most to me is there in verse 14, a clean conscience." A clean conscience. What is that? What is the conscience?

Well, Thayer defines the Greek word that I will not try to pronounce for conscience as, "the soul as distinguishing between what is morally good and bad, prompting to do the former and shun the latter, commending one, condemning the other." And in my research and study, I actually found a very interesting paper posted on the website of the National Institute of Health of all places that had this to say about the conscience. Bear with me.

"The concept of conscience, as commonly used in its moral sense, is the inherent ability of every healthy human being to perceive what is right and what is wrong, and on the strength of this perception to control, monitor, evaluate, and execute their actions." I might quibble with having the ability to control for an unbeliever.

"Such values as right or wrong, good or evil, just or unjust, and fair or unfair have existed throughout human history, but are also shaped by an individual's cultural, political, and economic environment." The quote continues, "The closer our interstate of conscience identifies with the higher perception of these concepts, such as good, right, just, and fair, the higher our degree of conscience and less physical stress is experienced if we feel that we act according to these concepts." It can be said that conscience is the degree of integrity and honesty of each human being because it monitors and determines the quality of one's actions.

All of that for this, the last part of this quote, "One who acts with a clear conscience has the advantage of feeling inner peace, which is a feeling that mitigates the adverse physiological effects experienced in times of stress." It's pretty interesting. That's a secular source, a government source actually, describing the human conscience and getting it pretty close. A.W. Tozer wrote a good bit about what he called the "inner voice" of the conscience, and he said this, "Now what we mean by conscience is that which always refers to right and wrong. Conscience never deals with theories about anything.

Conscience always deals with right and wrong, and the relation of the individual to right and wrong." Every person is born with a conscience, as Paul indicates in Romans chapter 2 verses 14 to 16, where he says, "For when the Gentiles who do not have the law naturally do the things of the law, these not having the law are a law to themselves, in that they demonstrate the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus." In John Calvin's commentary on Romans when discussing this passage, he said it's important to understand what Paul is saying and what he's not saying.

He says that, "Yes, Paul plainly says that the Gentiles to whom the law was not given show evidence of the law of God being written on their hearts, sort of as a remnant of common grace, if you will, but that Paul is not saying that such evidence shows they have a full understanding of God's law." Calvin talks about the heathen people, even disapproving of murder and theft and adultery, and perhaps even celebrating honesty and business transactions, but maybe they thought nothing of covetousness, for example. Their understanding of the law was incomplete, but the effect of the law was written on their heart to some degree.

So while their behavior would indicate seeds of what is right and lawful, having been implanted in their natures, that doesn't mean that their knowledge of the law was complete or even enough to lead them to Christ. Calvin went on to say this, "By the consciousness of having done good, men sustain and comfort themselves. Those who are conscious of having done evil are inwardly harassed and tormented.

Hence came these sayings of the heathens." And he quotes a heathen saying that says, "A good conscience is the widest sphere, but a bad one is the cruelest executioner, and more fiercely torments the ungodly than any furies can do." Calvin continues, "There is then a certain knowledge of the law by nature which says this thing is good and worthy of being desired, and that thing ought to be abhorred and avoided. However, though it's true that people are born with a conscience, which is sort of like an internal umpire calling balls and strikes, it's also true that every person is born with a conscience that is tainted by original sin.

We know that the Bible declares that human beings outside of Christ are born into what the reformers call total depravity." Excuse me. I agree with R.C. Sproul who preferred the term radical corruption instead of total depravity, because total depravity kind of sounds like people are born as bad as they can possibly be, totally and utterly depraved and evil. But that's not what the doctrine of total depravity teaches.

Sproul said that what the doctrine teaches might be better described as radical corruption because while people might not be born as bad and evil as they could possibly be, we are all certainly born corrupted to our core, down to the root, so to speak. So while it's wrong to think that men are so depraved that their consciences don't exist, it's right to think that because men are depraved their consciences are weakened and corrupted. Does that make sense? Now that's not to say it can't become almost non-existent or useless.

In fact, Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 4 verse 2 about the quote "seared consciences of certain hypocritical liars." The Greek word from which we get "seared" is also the word from which we get the English word "cauterize." Now both of those English words are typically positive words, right? I mean you sear a steak on both sides to seal in the juices. Doctors might cauterize a wound to stop the bleeding, you know? Both of those are good things. But the searing spoken of here is not a good thing. Wiersbury had a good word here.

He says the word seared means cauterized just as a person's flesh can be branded so that it becomes hard and without feeling, so a person's conscience can be deadened. Now listen to this part of his quote "whenever we affirm with our lips something that we deny with our lives, whether people know it or not we deaden our consciences just a little more." Let me say that again. "Whenever we affirm with our lips something that we deny with our lives, whether people know it or not we deaden our consciences just a little more." Another commentator said this and I really like it.

Paul knew what it was to have a dead burned conscience before he surrendered his life to Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. He felt completely justified in his persecution of Christians and hatred of Jesus. He could feel justified because his conscience was seared and needed a wake-up call which the Lord graciously provided. Every person in here this morning knows what it's like to argue with your conscience or to deceptively reason with it. Maybe there's a sin that plagues you and when you're tempted to commit that sin at first your conscience pipes up and says don't do that, but deep down you really want to.

So you begin bargaining with your conscience, perhaps explaining why it's not as bad as it seems or why you deserve to have this one thing this one time or enjoy this certain pleasure. Maybe you whine a little bit feeling sorry for yourself and perhaps that continues with your conscience continuing to nag you, continuing to say this thing is wrong, but your persistence eventually progresses from trying to persuade your conscience to grant you permission to proceed to the point where you tell your conscience to be quiet and you move on in on the sin that you desire.

What you think happens if that process plays out like that over and over and over again. What happens is that eventually your conscience becomes seared. As weirs be said it becomes deadened, hardened, and without feeling and at that point when the sin presents itself there isn't a whisper of conscience. It remains silent. It's in a coma at best. That's a dangerous place too because even though it might be seared with regard to one particular sin, the result is that it's also at least partially seared regarding all manner of sin.

And the worst case scenario is that by continuing in sin you train your conscience to approve of that which is wrong. That's what happened to Saul of Tarsus before he became Paul and it can happen to anyone. It can happen to you if it hasn't already. Weakened and corrupted as it is from the start and even if it becomes seared in this life, the conscience of an unbeliever will still be enough to convict them on the day of judgment. But again it's not enough to lead them to Christ without the intervention of the Holy Spirit, without the regenerating power of Christ. But what happens to our conscience when we are born again?

Think back to Paul before and after his encounter with Christ, before and after his conversion. Like the commenter mentioned before his conversion, Paul's conscience was pretty worthless. He had no trouble persecuting Christians thinking he was doing so in service to God. But once he was born again on that Damascus road, his conscience got a reset, didn't it? Not only a recalibrating reset so that his conscience was back to factory default so to speak on calling balls and strikes accurately, but also a cleansing reset. Paul talked about his conscience having been cleaned in 1 Corinthians 4, 4, 2 Corinthians 1, 12, and 2 Timothy 1, 3.

1 Corinthians 4, 4, 2 Corinthians 1, 12, and 2 Timothy 1, 3. Look, when the conscience is doing its job, if it hasn't been seared, it can be a constant accuser. Not a false accuser like the devil, but a righteous accuser. It can torment a man. That was my experience for a lot of years prior to my conversion. If you've heard my testimony, and if you hadn't, it's available on the church podcast, and I have it pinned to the top of my Facebook profile and my profile on X, formerly Twitter.

But part of my testimony is that for years prior to my conversion, I played the part of an upstanding citizen, all-American boy kind of thing, very well thought of in the community and so forth. But my conscience plagued me because my conscience knew who I really was. It wasn't pretty. It reminded me constantly of that unrighteousness that lived within me. I lived in fear of dying because even though I profess Christianity, even though I had gotten saved several times throughout my life, my conscience knew better and it wouldn't leave me alone. But when I was born again, man, oh man, the freedom.

Like Paul's, my conscience was both reset in the sense of being recalibrated, but also reset in the sense of being wiped clean. And I'm going to tell you something. I've said this many times before in various contexts, but I don't think I've said it here from this pulpit, but here it is. Even if there was no such thing as heaven, a clean conscience would be enough for me. Let me say that again. And this is just me, okay? It's just not doctrinal. This is personal. Even if there was no such thing as heaven, a clean conscience would be enough for me. There's nothing like it.

The peace that comes with a clean conscience that I can lay my head on a pillow at night and know, know that I am covered by the righteousness of Christ. That when the devil tries to tell me I'm a great sinner, I can say, you're exactly right, but let me tell you about my great savior. I can't calculate the value of that. It's not just because I'm terrible at math. No, it's because from my perspective at least, a clean and peaceful conscience is invaluable. It's priceless. So a great, great gift of salvation is a clean conscience. Your conscience gets a reset both in terms of recalibration and in terms of being white, clean.

And understand, God does that unilaterally. It's all Him. It's 100% a work of Christ, cleaning and recalibrating your conscience. But just like the twin truths of salvation, wherein God sovereignly chooses, He elects by Himself, yet man must respond to the gospel. Man has responsibility. And the twin truths of sanctification, wherein God works in you as you work out your salvation, knowing it's God who's doing it. In the same way here, God sovereignly and unilaterally resets your conscience when you were born again, and you work to train your conscience toward righteousness. How do we do that? How? How do we train our conscience?

Well, briefly I'll mention three ways, probably not an exhaustive list, but three ways. Number one, read your Bible. Often, read it, study it, meditate on it continually, establish a pattern and stick with it. Paul mentions renewing your mind in Romans chapter 12, verse 2. Renew and refresh your conscience by reading the Word as often as you can. Number two, meditate on the loveliness of Christ. Focus on the unfathomable riches of Christ. Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 1, verse 5, that the goal of His command, the commands Paul were giving, is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and an un-hypocritical faith.

Folks, Christ is the embodiment of purity, the embodiment of love. Focus on Him. Turn your eyes upon Jesus and look full in His wonderful face and allow His love and His purity to permeate your being, training your conscience in that love and purity. And then number three, throw yourself into fellowship with the people of God, where you can, quote, stimulate one another to love and good deeds and, quote, encourage one another, as Pastor Creus has been teaching us from Hebrews chapter 10, verses 24 and 25. Now that's just three ways to train your conscience. There may be others. So, what's the state of your conscience this morning?

Does it plague you day and night? Do you have to occupy yourself with things so that you can make that noise go away if your conscience accusing you? Does it remind you constantly of the sin that you continue to entertain? Or have you put it to sleep? Have you told it to hush so often that you've seared it, deadened it, hardened it? Are you able to sin without hesitation, without feeling guilty, without hearing that inner voice, as Tozer called it, shouting or even whispering to you, don't do that, it's wrong?

Have you persisted in sin to the point that you've trained your conscience to accept or even approve of sinful behaviors that are contrary to the will of Christ and the character of Christ? Or have you been born again and experienced the wonder of a conscience that has been cleansed by the blood of Christ, a conscience that has been recalibrated so that now the strikes are strikes and the balls are walls? If so, are you training it in righteousness by living in the Word every day? By focusing on the unfathomable riches of Christ and His mercy, His purity and His love?

By not forsaking the gathering together with your local church, but rather stimulating one another to love and good works and encouraging one another, even as the time draws near? What's the state of your conscience this morning? Ponder that and ask the Lord to help you assess the state of your conscience. Well, we began this morning looking at the phrase, "so great is salvation," in Hebrews chapter 2, first part of verse 3 again says, "How will we escape if we neglect so great is salvation?" Just got a couple minutes left, I'd like to focus our attention there because while for me personally, one of the things that makes salvation so great is a clean conscience.

Truth is, if you neglect such a great is salvation, you don't have a clean conscience to look forward to. I want to read you something I found from Charles Spurgeon as I was studying this passage. Spurgeon said this about neglecting salvation. Listen very closely to this please. Spurgeon said, "You see, dear friends, that we need not be great open centers in order to perish. It is merely a matter of neglect. See how it is put here. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? You need not go to the trouble of despising it or resisting it or opposing it. You can be lost readily enough simply by neglecting it.

In fact, the great mass of those who perish are those who neglect the great salvation. Let that question ring in our ears. How shall we escape?" Spurgeon continues, "There will be no escape. There can be none if we refuse the Lord Jesus. Do we mean to be lost? Dare we continue to neglect the great salvation? Hark! How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? Not if we resist it, reject it, despise it, oppose it, but if we merely neglect it. If a man is in business, it is not necessary that he should commit forgery in order to fail. He can fail by simply neglecting his business.

If a man is sick, he need not commit suicide by taking poison. He can do it just as surely by neglecting to take proper medicines. So is it in the things of God. Neglect is as ruinous as distinct and open opposition. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? If we neglect that salvation, is there any other way by which we can be rescued from destruction? Is there any other door of escape if we pass that one by? No, there is none." Close quote.

Finally, a timely reminder and a timely warning from the pen of Jonathan Edwards from his famous sermon entitled, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Edwards said, "There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of God. The bow of God's wrath is bent and the arrow made ready on the string and justice bends the arrow at your heart and strains the bow.

And it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God and that of an angry God without any promise or obligation at all that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood." Dear friends, whether here in this sanctuary this morning or listening to my voice via podcast, if you remain in your sins, if you've not been born again, if you haven't bent your knee to Christ, he has bent his bow toward you. The death arrow is ready to fly and the only thing that stays his hand is his good pleasure and his patience. Hebrews 9 and 27 tells us that we all have an appointment with death and after that comes judgment. Everybody.

I jokingly told Jared this morning there would be no Hulk Hogan references but I just thought, you know what? Hulk Hogan had his appointment this past week. It seems like the entire decade of the 80s had an appointment with death this past week with Theo and you know some other people but Theo was Malcolm J. Mahler was only 54, you know? Everybody has an appointment. It will be met. It won't come a moment too late or a moment too soon. Think of this. There is a date and an exact time down to the millisecond with your name on it and it's coming. It's closer this morning than it was yesterday.

In fact, it's closer right now than when we started this morning and if you're like I was all those years before the Lord saved me, your conscience is right this minute whispering to your heart, he's right, he's right, he's right. Won't you submit to Christ today? Won't you yield to the Holy Spirit's prompting? Won't you stop resisting? I can promise you that on the other side of your salvation a clean conscience awaits and it's a glorious peace that has to be experienced to be understood but hear me, that's not why you should come to Christ. No. It's a wonderful byproduct, yes, but it's not why you should come to Christ.

You know why you should come? Because he deserves it. Because he's worthy of all worship and he deserves to have your worship. Won't you come? Please come to Christ. Please come to Christ.